A series has just started. The two teams go into the ban phase and start picking champions to ban. The blue side gets their first pick and use it on Sivir. The red side quickly locks in Zeri and a support.
If you’re a LoL viewer, you’ve probably seen this exact scene play out many times in the top leagues recently (or the reverse with Zeri going first). It’s a swap that teams are more than willing to make because it supposedly doesn’t give one team a huge advantage over the other.
But is that really the case? We were curious, so we decided to run the numbers. We took every Zeri vs Sivir game from the beginning of the summer splits of the LCS, LEC, LPL, and LCK until now and made a note of which champion’s team came out on top. We also checked out a couple of other champions against Zeri, too, just for fun.
These were the results:
LCS
Zeri vs Sivir (13W-11L) 54.2%
Zeri vs Lucian (2W-1L)
Zeri vs Jinx (3W-5L)
Zeri vs Kalista (2W-3L)
Total: (20W-20L) 50%
Notes: The LCS has extremely balanced numbers with the overall total of Zeri vs the four chosen champions coming out to a perfect 50%. That’s an ideal outcome for any balancing team. The Zeri vs Sivir matchup also doesn’t seem overly one-sided.
LEC
Zeri vs Sivir (3W-5L) 37.5%
Zeri vs Lucian (2W-3L)
Zeri vs Jinx (1W-0L)
Zeri vs Kalista (1W-3L)
Total: (7W-11L) 38.9%
Notes: The LEC is easily Zeri’s worst region for these matchups out of the four we checked out. She has a losing record in all but one and an overall total win percentage of only 38.9%. The Zeri vs Sivir matchup is even worse at 37.5%. With all of that said, the LEC was also the least likely to have these matchups occur at all, with only 18 total games so far where they’ve happened, so there’s not a large amount of data to be had. The primary reason for this is that the LEC seemingly prefers to answer Zeri with Twitch. Twitch has seen an incredible amount of use against her in the LEC, far and away more than any other league where Twitch only faces her occasionally. Unfortunately, Twitch was outside of our scope this time around so we didn’t collect those records.
LPL
Zeri vs Sivir (23W-20L) 53.5%
Zeri vs Lucian (12W-10L)
Zeri vs Jinx (10W-7L)
Zeri vs Kalista (6W-4L)
Total: (51W-41L) 55.4%
Notes: The LPL is Zeri’s best region out of the four, where she enjoys an overall win percentage of 55.4% across the four matchups, and doesn’t have a losing record against any of them. It was also the region where these matchups occurred the most by far, which is actually pretty strange considering the Zeri vs Sivir matchup didn’t happen a single time in the LPL summer split until week 8. Same for the Zeri vs Lucian matchup. But once they did start…they really started. The matchups were especially prevalent in the LPL playoffs and regional qualifiers, with one particular series having the Zeri vs Sivir matchup in ALL FIVE GAMES.
LCK
Zeri vs Sivir (13W-18L) 41.9%
Zeri vs Lucian (10W-4L) 71.4%
Zeri vs Jinx (2W-0L)
Zeri vs Kalista (1W-1L)
Total: (26W-23L) 53.1%
Notes: The LCK had perhaps the most interesting results out of the four regions. While not quite as severe as in the LEC, Sivir did enjoy great success against Zeri in this region. What jumped out even more, though, was Zeri’s record against Lucian. What was a pretty even matchup in the other regions was a complete washout in the LCK with Zeri holding a 71.4%(!!) win percentage against Lucian. It helped boost what would have been a sub-50% win percentage into a nice 53.1% for Zeri.
Conclusion
Zeri vs Sivir Four Region Total: (52-54) 49.1%
Complete Total From Four Regions: (104-95) 52.3%
To be quite honest, we were shocked by these results. We haven’t hidden our disdain for seeing Zeri reach the Summoner’s Rift. We knew that Zeri’s win percentage had been on the decline as of late, but we still expected to see more one-sided win rates like the Lucian one from the LCK. What we found was quite the opposite. Not only was Zeri not dominating, but she actually had a losing record in some matchups. In the ones where she didn’t, she wasn’t so far ahead that it seemed obscene. In fact, she almost seemed…balanced.
But surely that can’t be right. We’ve all watched her run amok all summer…or have we?
To be honest, we don’t know anymore, but one thing we can say is that the numbers don’t lie. That said, some would argue that seemingly having no bad matchups against some of your most common opponents shows a lack of balance in and of itself. However, we won’t go that far. Especially with the verdict still out on some champions (like Twitch) and another nerf looming.
But getting back to our original question…yes, it does seem that the Zeri/Sivir swap is one that offers no inherent advantage to one side or the other when looked at in a vacuum. So the next time you see it happen just smile and think, “Yes! We’re in for a good match!”
Too much to ask? We tried.